Police atrocity blog

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Ronald Petruney, 49, of Washington, Pa., died at 6:58 a.m. today at Washington Hospital, Warco said in a news release.

Petruney suffered cardiac arrest Tuesday. Washington City Police found him in a confused state on Jefferson Avenue. Police said Petruney became combative and they were forced to use the Taser to subdue him.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

According to Cameron Langford at the Court House News Service, Police in Texas public schools are increasingly using force against children, including Tasers and pepper spray, and the "overwhelming majority" of police "interventions" involve "low-level, non-violent misdemeanors like disruption of class or disorderly conduct," a public interest group says.

AAPP says: I'm glad to see that a watchdog group wants Info on Police Use of Force Against Schoolkids. It's time to stop the torture of school children in our public school system. Where is the U.S. Department of Justice when we need them to protect our children? Texas is not the only state torturing our children.

Monday, November 16, 2009

ORANGE COUNTY: A woman who said she had her pants pulled down before being spanked more than one dozen times by an Ocoee Police Department sergeant plans to attend an upcoming court hearing and hopes to speak to a judge.

The 29-year-old victim said she is outraged that her accused attacker, former Ocoee police Sgt. Tom Maroney, is seeking leniency in court.

Maroney made a deal in court nine months ago that reduced the charge to battery, gave up his police license and was sentenced to one year of probation.

Maroney is now asking a judge to remove him from probation.

The victim said she feels like Maroney should have faced stiffer punishment.

"I was like, 'Stop. Stop. Let me go. Let me go. Leave me alone. Get off of me," the victim said. "I just hope that the judge gives him what he truly deserves."

The victim hopes to tell a judge on Nov. 13 that Maroney should remain on probation.

Watson Black was on his way home from his dry cleaning job when he noticed a police car behind him. Watson, a mentor at the local high school and a member of the the Whitesville Chamber of Commerce was used to obeying law, having never been charged with any offense civil or criminal in his 32 years of life.

Still he knew the danger police posed. His mother had told him since he was a child that he should never believe he could do what whites did and get away with it, if only because whites would point the legal finger at him if anything went wrong.

Even as he drove at the speed limit and stopped well before the corner at the next stop sign, he felt ill at ease. Just three months prior Whitesville police officers pulled over a car driven by a Howard University students, with two classmates and, for some reason that was never fully, explained, two Whitesville police officers had shot fifteen bullets into the students' car before even approaching them or running their license plate numbers.

Although no one could prove it, most local Blacks considered the incident to be yet another color-aroused assassination by police, while whites who were 81% of Whitesville, believed the students must have done something wrong, even if police could not say convincingly what it was. Two of the students had died before they reached the hospital while the third was paralized from the neck down.

The knowledge that Samuel Bill Sye would never walk again burned deep in the hearts of Black people, in a place that whites could not see or conceive. In fact, since that day Whitesville had become a tinderbox awaiting a match, a bolt of thunder or just a cigarette carelessly thrown from the window of a Whitesville squad car.

What distinguished Whitesville from other towns across America was that most of its sons and daughters had found no jobs in the local area and had instead enlisted in the US Armed services, returning home with a few dollars toward college and the best munitions and target practice training that the United States Armed Services could provide.

Encouraged by Alex Oldhead, a fiftyish ex-Black Panther who had seen the group annihilated in the early seventies and only escaped himself because he was doing time for armed robbery, returning veterans from both Gulf wars had obtained gun permits and given each other new Glocks and high-powered rifles as Christmas presents. They established a de facto Blacks-only shooting club, hunted together on weekends and shot bull's eyes on weeknights. Only they knew whose faces their minds' eyes superimposed over the red and white cardboard.

Blacks in Whitesville never talked of their weekend and evening activities with their white co-workers and friends, and no one asked. With gun laws watered down statewide like cheap liquor, there was no firearm they couldn't buy at Wal-Mart, at a weekend flea market or over the Internet. At the age of eleven or twelve, young men and some pig-tailed young girls snuck romantic looks at one another as they decimated targets that seemed miles away from their pre-pubescent fantasies.

Behind Watson Black, the flashing red and blue lights began furiously blinking on and off, for no reason that Watson could comprehend, except his skin color, which in Whitesville was reason enough. Watson pulled his Buick carefully over to the curb, put his hands on the top of the steering wheel and waited what seemed like an eternity for the police officer to exit his car and sidle up behind Watson's driver's side window, with his hand on his sidearm as if he were expecting a shootout.

Watson didn't open the window, though. The electric window button was on the armrest of his door, which he couldn't reach while keeping his hands in the officer's sight. Unwilling to provide any pretext for a catastrophe, Watson thought quickly, keeping his right arm on the steering wheel while only the bottom of his left elbow to pull the little lever toward him that opened the window behind which the police officer was poised.

"Who's car is this?" the officer asked Watson angrily. Taking in the officers tone, but careful not to react in kind, Watson wondered why the officer would ask such a question, when the computer in his squad car had surely provided that information earlier?

"I am Watson Black, officer, and I own this car." The heavyset man in blue snorted something incomprehensible and then asked to see Watson's license and registration. "It's in the glovebox," he responded, "but I also have a licensed firearm in the glovebox."

The Officer stepped back. "Get outta the car! he said." Watson thought to himself that the Second Amendment might have more meaning to Black people if it applied to us as it did to others, but it never had and never would.

As Watson stepped out of car, he found himself flung around like a napsack after school and slammed against the side of his car. Now, thought Watson, color-aroused ideation - including the police's belief that Blacks have no rights which police officers are bound to respect - might well determine whether Watson lived to see his wife and three children again or died at the side of this street, because he had a licensed gun in glove compartment of his car.

This was a moment for which Watson had prepared himself throughout his life, although he had never been charged or tried by the police for anything. He knew that didn't matter, and neither did the college degree that hung on the wall of his livingroom where his children could see it. The officer was twisting Watson's arm with one hand as he pushed to talkie button on his radio, calling for backup.

Watson finally screamed in pain and saw through is periferal vision a blue gun with a red tip that Watson immediately recognized. It was an electric shock gun, a 50,000 volt electrocution device.

Watson recalled in that split second his last visit to his family doctor, who had informed Watson and his wife Dolores that Watson had an operable heart arythmia which could be cured with surgery, but which could cause his heart to stop beating if he had an accident or suffered a sudden shock. Watson and Dolores were married for ten years with three children in grade school and junior high. A brick faced home with a small in-ground pool in the yard. They had worked to achieve the American dream and now a fat-ass police officer with no reason whatsoever was prepared to take it all from him, with a potentially lethal jolt from an electric gun.

"AW HELL NO," Watson screamed out loud as he freed his right hand from the officer's grasp, spun around determinedly as quickly as he had before involuntarily and shocked the police officer in his red face with the officer's own blue and red gun.

The officer's name was McMann. Charles "Chucky" McMann, who unbenownst to Watson, had a history of police abuse complaints filed against him, one of which involved sex with a nine year old girl beside the highway that led past Dunking doughnuts. Witnesses has seen the dark police car on the side of the road, but none of them were interviewed by the police investigations unit. The girl's mother had taken her to the local hospital for a sexual assault examination, but the police had picked up the evidence and then it promptly disappeared.

"The police aren't perfect" said Chief Pourker on the granite steps of the Police Department, but they risk their lives for you every day. Most whites in Whitesville nodded their assent in unison during the chief's press conference, and Shamiah's abuse report was deep-sixed like a Japanese submarine on Armistice Day. Blacks, meanwhile, sat grim-faced like drivers waiting to pay a toll as predictable as the drive to work.

"Chucky" McCann was on the ground and Watson Black had stepped into an alternate reality, where he was no longer law-abiding in the face of provocation, but instead had "resisted arrest, assaulted an officer and was still in the unlawful possession of public property. The stun gun. Perhaps because of Watson's training in the first Gulf War, to "kill or be killed," or perhaps because of his six-months' training in Iraq to act bravely and decisively in the face of danger, Watson reached down, removed the shaking officer's gun from his holster and shot him squarely in the forehead. The officer had been "neutralized."

Leaving "Chucky" on the pavement, but keeping his radio, sidearm and stun gun, Watson drove deep into the woods, pulled off onto a dirt road and drove without thinking to the cabin where the Firearms Club began its hunts, typically at two or three o'clock in the morning.

Officer down! Officer down! Within fifteen minutes there were twenty squad cars, an ambulance and a line of unmoving traffic stopped at the fatal point where Officer McCann had died. Now, all of the police were red faced, including two Black officers who seemed to have learned to be red-faced by immersion, as part of their six-months' training and years of on-the-job experience, emulating their white counterparts.

Stopped in front of the cabin, breathing deeply in a surreal dream, Watson could feel police searching for him as if each of them was a spider climbing up his arm. But he couldn't imagine the scene in the town in which he was born and where he and so many others would ultimately die.

Police officers, many of whom had also been to Iraq and Afghanistan, were kicking in doors of Black people and dragging men women and children into the street to respond for what they - the Black race - had done to "Chucky". Valentine Broadnax, a librarian in the own library lost two front teeth when an unidentified police officer slammed her face against a cement column, on her own front porch.

Police ran over one Black high school in front of the Whitesville ice skating rink as they charged into the crowd, looking for a man twice or three times as old as any of the children in front of the skating rink. Word spread quickly by cellphone, with photographs of the blood and carnage and then a text message went out whose sender would only be identified months later in court, as a grand jury sought to try those who knew what would happen that night but failed to call police.

A steady stream of cars, many of who's drivers' Sunday best were returned to them Saturday by Watson Black, drove with their lights out toward the hunting cabin. Police were looking for a navy blue Buick and ignored, for the moment this exodus of other cars, escaping in the midst of confusion. Some had their guns in their lockers at the cabin and others drove with their sniper's rifles under their seats or in the trunks of their cars.

Burtha Hadden-Nough was among those driving toward the cabin, but she was thinking of her firearms, and had forgotten half of them as she grabbed her computer list from the printer and headed out into the warm night. Burtha was childless and divorced, living on only because life refused to release her from the pain of her memories.

Her only son, whom she affectionately called "Nattie" although his name was "Nathan" had died three years earlier after a bar fight. He looked at someone's girl, someone looked back dangerously and "Nattie" punched him in the face, after which bedlam reigned for a long moment that lasted sixty seconds. During that moment the police were called and fifteen minutes later they arrived, finding half a dozen Black men shooting pool and filling the air with Marlboro smoke. The police officers, one whose skin was white and another whose skin was brown, like Nathan's demanded to know whose name was "Nathan".

Nathan identified himself and the police led him out the front door, a moment after which a shot rang out. When Nathan's cousin and Burtha's only nephew stepped outside, he saw Nathan lying on the ground, face down, with a raucous hole in his back and a pool of blood spreading out horizontally on the sidewalk beneath and around him. He ran to Nathan even as police order him to stay away. A second shot rang out and Nathan's cousin lay twitching on the ground trying to reach his left hand behind him to the place that felt like a branding iron. And then he lay there, his left hand covered in his own blood.

"Fucking monkey niggers!" said Officer "Chucky" McCann, while others from the bar stood back and watched in horror. Most Blacks cry, pray and call Al Sharpton. Burtha, who spent two nights a week and Sunday's in her Baptist Church relied on one phrase from the Bible's First Testament and a proverb: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" but "for everything there is a season. For the four years since the death of her son and the shooting of her nephew, Burtha Hadden-Nough had thought of only one thing: extracting an eye and removing a tooth from the face of "Chuckie" McCann.

As word spread through text messages that law-abiding Watson Black had shot Officer "Chucky" at point blank range and radio stations predicted the death penalty, Burtha transferred her vengefullness toward "Chucky" for gratitude toward Watson Black, "Chucky's all-Black jury of one.

It was well-known. Police didn't fear prosecutors, trial courts, judges or juries because police all worked in a system designed to protect whites and police, whatever their skin color, from abstract notions of justice that did not apply, in any case, to the Black people they followed and hounded each day. Even for brown-skinned police, a badge and gun were an assurance of impunity when they pulled up behind another brown-skinned driver, putting their right hands on their leather gun holsters.

Certainly Burtha wasn't paid very much, and not nearly as much as the white women she had trained to run to the city's insurance office, but she had earned something that, to her, was far more useful: the names and addresses of each police officer in whitesville and all of the names and addresses of the husbands, wives and children on their insurance policies.

When she arrived at the cabin, they all reviewed family insurance lists together and then groups of two each took a page and headed out to the address at the top of the data page. Everyone knows who Nat Turner was but few in this century have his attitude. Whitesville Blacks were different, perhaps because they had learned to kill, or perhaps because they had returned home to be treated as "the enemy" had been in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

By early the next morning the news was international. The FBI announced that the terrorists who had committed these crimes were "cowardly" and the three dozen police officers who had been targeted in the line of duty were heroes who had given their lives for (white) America in the line of duty. The television screens across America were filled with little blond children and teenagers, as well as some Blacks, with their names and ages floating across the page as the details of their lives were recounted and some of their more distant relatives where interviewed.

All told, 36 police officers and 95 additional family members in 49 locations, from toddlers to high school pom pom girls and college students had been methodically assassinated. Television helicopters from the local ABC station and from across American showed the houses, of police officers - houses in which, unlike the Black masses, the officers and their families had always felt safe as bear cub in the mother's den.

Now, safety was shattered not just for the police officers of Whitesville, but for whole police forces and families across the United States of America. How could they do their jobs, the newspapers wondered, if every pretextual car stop could end in guerrilla attacks on police officers and their families?

President Obama promised solemnly that those responsible would be brought to justice, that the events in Whitesville were unrelated to skin color, but were the work of an anti-government para-military cell, most of whose members had served in the US Armed Forces.

The para-military cell had reconvened at the cabin, making yet another unthinkable determination that their lives would be remembered for resistance even after their bodies were dead. Whites would not immediately understand (they never did), but they would "understand it better by and by".

They set out on a back road that led to the largest local shopping center and parked in front of the arches that marked the front entrance. Coincidentally, it was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers overrun shopping centers like roaches from a swinging rotten potato sack.

75 members of the hunting club entered beneath the arches and spread out across the doorway inside. And then they began to let loose with all they had, knowing that they all would die, but each Nat Turner among them determined leave an indelible historical message of resistance in the face of systemic violence under color of law.

Watson Black was tried on the side of the road by his every recollection of police behavior and by his near-death at the hands of Officer Chucky McCann. He was tried that day in the International Court of Blacks' Patience and Forebearance and the verdict still rings today as it did beside the road on that warm evening in November, when his car was stopped by Officer Chucky McCann, in the city of Whitesville:

Watson Black: The Court finds you IMPATIENT!

The above is a fictional account. Any commonality between police abuses recounted above and those that take place daily in the United States of America are strictly coincidental. Nat Turner is an historical figure.

ST. LOUIS -- Nearly three years after Heather Ellis switched checkout lines at a southeast Missouri store and touched off what she calls a racially charged dispute with white customers and authorities, the young black schoolteacher faces a trial that could send her to prison for 15 years.

Witnesses have told authorities that Ellis cut in front of waiting customers at the Walmart in Kennett on Jan. 6, 2007, shoved merchandise already placed on a conveyor belt out of the way, and became belligerent when confronted, according to court filings.

Ellis maintains she was merely joining her cousin, whose checkout line was moving more quickly. She claimed in a written complaint to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that she was then pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers.

( . . . )

Ellis' written account to the NAACP describes [her] and her cousin getting into separate checkout lanes before Ellis switched into the faster-moving line. The woman behind them had placed items on the conveyor belt, and Ellis alleged the woman pushed her when she tried to put her own items down. WaPost

It seems to me that one person in a checkout line often holds receives more goods for which to pay while another person in their group grabs more things off of the shelf. If the white woman behind Heather Ellis did shove Heather, why wasn't she arrested and charged with assault and battery? If the skin colors of those involved had been exchanged, would the white woman have been arrested instead of the Black woman? These are some of the questions regarding color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior that must be asked in cases such as this one.

Officers eventually followed her to the parking lot, she said, using racial slurs and telling her to go back to the ghetto. As her aunt and uncle drove into the parking lot, Ellis said, the officers "jumped" on her even though she said she was not resisting.

If the police referred to Heather Ellis using color-aroused epithets, that certainly would demonstrate color aroused ideation, emotion and behavior. Police who demonstrate color-aroused ideation, emotion and behavior in public should be screened for Extreme Color-Aroused Disorder (ECAD) before their verbal insults lead to jumping on people, and jumping on people leave the victims of police brutality stone-cold dead on the asphalt.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI — According to caller.com, and kristv, a 58-year-old South Carolina man who police subdued using a Taser and then performed CPR on died Friday.

The man was removed from life support Friday afternoon by doctors at Christus Spohn Hospital South, said Corpus Christi Police Capt. Todd Green, department spokesman.

Authorities wouldn’t release the man’s name, pending notification of family members. An autopsy will be done by the Nueces County Medical Examiner’s Office to determine an official cause of death, police said. The autopsy could take days depending upon the medical examiner’s workload Monday morning, according to Ric Ortiz, an assistant to the medical examiner.

“A preliminary investigation has shown the officers acted appropriately in responding to an aggressive individual who was acting erratically,” said Police Chief Troy Riggs “Unfortunately, he has died and we will continue the investigation.”

The five patrol officers who were placed on paid administrative leave have been cleared to work, Green said. Placing the officers on paid administrative is a routine policy for incidents under investigation, he said.

The incident began at 6:54 p.m. Wednesday when officer Stephan Beletic saw drivers flashing their headlights at Cimarron Boulevard and Airline Road. Beletic saw a man riding his bicycle illegally against the flow of traffic and attempted to stop him. The man didn’t stop and rode into a parking lot of restaurant where he banged on the restaurant’s window and spoke unintelligibly, Green said.

Beletic, who already had called for backup, began to frisk the man to make sure he wasn’t armed.

The man resisted, and Beletic managed to cuff one hand, but the man continued to struggle. Officers Ross Murray and Daryl Anderson arrived on the scene and Murray used a Taser, hitting the man in the lower back. The man appeared unaffected by the 50,000-volt stun gun, Green said, adding that police aren’t sure if the probe even penetrated the several layers of clothes the man was wearing.

Murray then placed the Taser on the man’s shoulder blade and shocked him, Green reported. The man continued to be combative, Green said.

Anderson used pepper spray, which also did little. Officer Jason Rhodes arrived and the four fell to the ground in a struggle with the man.

It wasn’t until a fifth officer, Jason Tello, arrived that they were able to finishing handcuffing the man, Green said.

Once the man was in custody, he quit breathing, Green said. MORE HEREAAPP: Had enough yet?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Residents fed up with speed traps in tiny town that has seven officers

Crittenden County sheriff's Investigator Thomas Martin said of the Jericho, Ark., police department: "You can't even get them to answer a call because normally they're writing tickets."

Tim Rand / AP

Readers may find this hard to believe, but Baldblog points out this case and MSNBC has reported it as well:

JERICHO, Ark. - It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

A relatively new blog, Baldblog, focusing on police lawlessness and impunity, asks the following question:

·Have you ever worked for a company that operated thousands of branches across America employing hundreds of thousands of people of varying ethnic and educational backgrounds and attitudes? Maybe Wal-Mart or McDonalds. There may be others.

·How many of those employees can regularly ignore traffic and civil law and proceed with absolutely no legal results?

·How many of the fellow employees in this company carry guns with legal permission to murder those who disobey them, or even if they merely suspect something was happening they didn’t like? And,

·What if those employees are guaranteed to be believed, no matter how much they lie, by any judge in any courtroom in the country simply because they had the job? BigBaldwin.blogspot.com

In the broadest terms, the impunity with which such a group could operate seems to be the problem we have in the United States, and which other nations confront as well.

I do have a question about the question posed though: Baldblog posits that this force acting with impunity includes:

people of varying ethnic and educational backgrounds and attitudes

I'm left wondering whether having a police force that includes "various ethnic groups" is suggested as a potential risk factor for a force that acts with lawlessness and impunity. I'm not sure what "various ethnic groups" has to do with the premise. Likewise, I'm not sure that various "educational levels" is a significant part of the problem. Medical doctors, who have more education that most people in our society, nonetheless have been proved to provide less agressive and less appropriate medical care for members of minority groups (and women) than they provide to white men, in spite of the fact that doctors have immense education, particularly in the area where they seem to discriminate against minorities and women.

If Bradblog is reading, maybe he can discuss the issues of people of "varying ethnic"backgrounds and "educational backgrounds" as risk factors for police lawlessness and impunity. For example, would an all-white police force be more accountable than a multi-ethnic force. It seems that "attitude" is more important than ethnic composition and educational level, although the existence of an all-white police force can be an indication, by itself, of the "attitude" of those selection and supervising the police.

I believe the problem is not "ethnic backgrounds" or "educational levels" but rather the third factor that Bradblog mentioned: "attitudes." An attitude, literally, is a tendency to go in one direction or another. When voters go to the polls, for example, skin color can often be helpful in predicting how they will vote. However, it seems to me that police officers' attitude is influenced more by the role they have in society (control the populace) which may even require that they demonstrate that they can act with impunity and irrationality. When an occupying force can act this way, with no negative consequences, it demonstrates and reiterates its control over the target population.

Perhaps part of the functional purpose of irrational acts of impunity is to demonstrate to the population the unquestioned authority of the police, who effectively say, 'You are powerless in your interactions with us and in our control over you.'

Monday, November 9, 2009

Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) in Fort Worth, Texas tells me that the Saturday, November 7, 2009 protest against the electrocution of Michael Jacobs Jr. received excellent media coverage that serves as a model for protests nationwide:

Pre-trial, extra-judicial electrocution and execution is quite simply lynching by another mechanical means, but now it is under color of law rather than under cover of Klu Klux Klan suits. The result is the same. Black people who have not been convicted or even tried for any crime are dying and frying daily across the United States, while many others pretend that this is normal. Instead, Klansmen have traded their white suits and hats for blue suits and bronze badges.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

As reported by Traci Shurley at The Star-Telegram.com more than 50 people marched through downtown Fort Worth on Saturday calling for police to stop using Tasers and punish an officer involved in the April death of a mentally ill man. The protest was organized by supporters of the family of Michael Jacobs, 24, who died after a Fort Worth police officer shot him twice with a Taser to subdue him. Jacobs’ death was ruled a homicide by the Tarrant County medical examiner and will be reviewed by a grand jury.

"I’m really grateful to this big old crowd for speaking on behalf of my son," said Charlotte Jacobs, Michael’s mother.The protesters walked from the Fort Worth municipal building to the Tarrant County Courthouse carrying U.S. flags and signs, some of which read "Lazy Cops Taser" and "Tasers trample the Constitution."

The death occurred after police responded to a call from Jacobs’ parents that he was being disruptive. Police said the officer used the Taser after Jacobs became combative.

In his report, Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani found that Officer Stephanie A. Phillips shocked Jacobs twice with a Taser — once for 49 seconds and once for five seconds. According to the report, the officer told a detective that the first jolt was longer because "she unknowingly kept the Taser trigger engaged." She remains on active duty.

Jacobs’ family has filed a wrongful-death suit. Last month, an attorney for the family said witnesses have disputed claims that he fought with police. On Oct. 16, Police Chief Jeff Halstead announced that his department had finished its investigation of Jacobs’ death and provided copies of the report to the FBI and Justice Department. He said officers would get more training in how to deal with mentally ill people and in the use of force. The Rev. Kyev Tatum, president of the Tarrant County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organizer of Saturday’s march, said that Tasers inflict cruel and unusual punishment on the community and that their use must stop. More HERE

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Abstract: Police used a Taser gun to restrain a resident outside of his home on Crain Avenue as it burned at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

The resident, Mike Bartlett, said he was returning from downtown for his cell phone when he noticed his sister's room on fire. He ran in to make sure she was not there and continued to find his friends in the basement and alert them of the fire....

Police used a Taser gun to restrain a resident outside of his home on Crain Avenue as it burned at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

The resident, Mike Bartlett, said he was returning from downtown for his cell phone when he noticed his sister's room on fire. He ran in to make sure she was not there and continued to find his friends in the basement and alert them of the fire. He said his cousin's girlfriend was sleeping upstairs so he went back in the house to retrieve her.

"As I was running downstairs, I could hear the window glass popping because of the heat," Bartlett said.

When he went got outside, Bartlett said police officers were at the end of the driveway. He said he approached them for help, but they dismissed him. As he walked toward one of his friends, he said the officers tackled and restrained him with the Taser gun, giving them no reason for their force.

According to the Kent City Police levels of resistance report, Bartlett used psychological and physical active resistance to avoid arrest. The report stated he was both combative and intoxicated. No one from the Police Department was available for comment.

Bartlett said he was not offered medical attention by the officers. Instead, he was taken directly to the police station. Bartlett went to the hospital following his court appearance Sunday. He said he was treated for first- and second-degree burns.

Bartlett's trial is set for December. The Red Cross helped the displaced family of four, which does not include any Kent State students. The cause of the fire is still being investigated.

I mean come the f*** on!!! How many of these events have to happen till people learn?? It's bloody obvious something needs to be done and it needs to be done FAST! These moron cops seem to be nothing short of 'Gunslinging Sherifs' which are causing nothing but havoc and have this idea that they rule the world. Bushe's term in the office is over we don't want a f***ing Police State, thank you.

Moreover, tasers should be permanently removed from use across all states, it's obviously being misused by the police not to apprehend uncooperative persons but more precisely to torture them for what ever reason even if they maybe innocent *points to this story*.

But what's the bloody point this story will just be another of many more to come ...

FORT WORTH, Texas – On Saturday, November 7, people will march from downtown City Hall to the uptown County Courthouse, starting at noon, to highlight the increasing number of deaths related to tasing. The march dubbed as a March for Dignity is part of a growing movement around the country and the world to end the use of tasers deployed by law enforcement.

The Fort Worth demonstration is aimed to make a statement to city leaders and law enforcement.

The controversy arises at the same time the number of taser related fatalities approaches 500. At the same time, however, Taser International, the maker of the electronic control device (ECD), continually insists the weapon is non-lethal.

In Fort Worth, when Carolyn Daniels (#138) was died on the floor in the county jail after being tasered on June 24, 2005, hardly anyone paid notice. They said she had crack cocaine in her system. Had she not, we were led to believe, she would have survived the shocking.

But Michael Jacobs Jr. (#424) had no such foreign substance in his system when he was tasered and died on April 18, 2009.

As an emissary who stood over the coffin of the 24-year old young man, I delivered a Resolution to the family on behalf of the international community, and a network of supporters. From Amnesty International to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and bloggers around the world, we raised our voices against this form of torture and death.

I shed a tear for Michael. I shed a tear for Carolyn. I shed a tear for Deacon Fredrick William (#56) whose video electrocution was shown all over the internet, shocked repeatedly in the neck until dead. The remaining 22 minutes of the video was devoted to trying to bring him back to life, and the egg-look on the face of the officers.

But I shed more tears for the living and the unborn. When Valreca Redden was tasered by Trotwood police, she was pregnant. No one can imagine the trauma to the unborn fetus as his mother was being electrocuted with 50,000 volts of electricity. She was guilty of nothing except being distraught. The baby was completely innocent.

We are just now realizing some the lingering after-effects of tasing. Some who have been tasered in the past are now beginning to show signs of involuntary neuromuscular convulsions, what we otherwise would call the “twitches”.

Imagine, if you will, the last minute of Michael Junior’s life, for that is just about how long it took Officer Stephanie Phillips to summarily electrocute him and terminate his life.

For one minute, hold your breath, and close your eyes, and imagine sticking your finger into a light socket. Hold it there for one minute, while 240 volts of electricity race through your body. Are you still holding your breath?

That is what happened to Michael Jacobs Jr. But instead of 240 volts, it is 50,000 volts, blazing inside his body, for one whole minute. At the first jolt, the muscles contract and hold, and hold, and hold, until there is a release. If there is no release, the organ muscles shut down and organs began to pop.

Michael could not breathe, even if he wanted to. The lung muscles shut down. The heart muscle shut down. The bile burst, and the organs fried like chicken, for one eternity of a minute. Thus, what the coroner saw was ruled a homicide.

Consider the Poem by Willie Jolley:

I have only just a minute, only sixty seconds in itForced upon me, can't refuse itDidn't seek it, didn't choose it,But it's up to me to use itI must suffer if I abuse it.Just a tiny little minuteBut Eternity is in it.

Rory McKenzie is a 25-year old Black man who was killed in a taser-related incident by Kern County Sheriff deputies. Kern County coroner John Van Rensselaer ruled the death a homicide. [SOURCE]

McKenzie did a bad thing on July 2. He was involved in a domestic dispute with his wife. However, the penalty for domestic disputes is not death.

There needs to be some consequences for Sgt. Otis Whinery, a 24-year veteran; Senior Deputy Douglas Jauch, K-9 Handler, an 8-year veteran; Deputy Edward Tucker, a 12-year veteran; and Deputy Patrick McNeal, a six-year veteran. The district attorney should bring criminal charges against them for this homicide.

These deputies used a taser gun to subdue McKenzie. Deputy Jaunch also let his K-9 dog bite McKenzie on the leg before they took him into custody.

After the 50,000 volts of electricity coursed through his body ... and he was bitten by police dog ... and he was handcuffed ... McKenzie began to have difficulty breathing. The deputies knew that they went to far. They performed CPR on McKenzie.

An ambulance arrived and took McKenzie to Kern Medical Center, where he died.

McKenzie's wife accused the deputies of using excessive force, but would not say if she is filing a formal complaint.

Have you noticed that more of these taser-related deaths are being ruled 'homicide' nowadays? There was a homicide ruling down in Ft. Worth TX where police killed a 24-year old man in his front yard. There is a major public rally taking place on November 7th to protest the fact that the police officer who killed this young man has not been punished by her department.

Also, I encourage all villagers tojoin us on December 4thas we particpate in a Day of Blogging for Justice: Stop Taser Torture.

We Black and many white bloggers have been documenting the the outrageous taking of human life, without court process, often without charges, frequently without any meaningful police explanation of why the person was electrocuted and now they're dead. We've done a lot of writing, but it doesn't seem like the police officers with the portable electrocution guns are reading our blog posts.

What is our theory of the process of change with respect to summary electrocution by police? Do we believe that things will change if it's in the newspaper? Do we believe that Congress will make "Civil Rights Act of 2009" that states the right of Blacks to have a trial before they are electrocuted? Or are we communicating with the Black and white public in order to prepare the public to demand change? If so, WHAT SORT of change, and by whom?

It seems to me that there is a fundamental lack of an effective strategy for change.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Well, here are the statistics for deaths after "Taser" shocks between 2000 and 2004, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Since the number of pre-trial, extrajudicial electrocution guns in police hands has increased considerably over the five years since 2004, it's no surprise that deaths after shocking incidents has increased as well. The number of deaths identified by the Electronic Village blog in the first ten months of 2009 (45) is already greater than the 2004 total.

And yet, if there were 39 in 2004, I would have expected to find double that by this time of the year, precisely because the the number of electric guns in use has increased so much. Let's keep looking, and let's verify whether the police are reporting all of the electric gun usages and all of deaths resulting.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

According to JOHN SCHWARTZ of the New York Times, there is a man in Texas who has dogs whom he insists can pick guilty defendants out of lineups. If one of these dogs start barking at someone in a lineup, that person may be held over for trial and convicted mostly on the dog's say so.

HOUSTON — A dog’s sniff helped put Curvis Bickham in jail for eight months. Now that the case against him has been dropped, he wants to tell the world that the investigative technique that justified his arrest smells to high heaven.

Curvis Bickham was identified in a scent lineup and spent eight months in jail until another man confessed to the crime.

The police told Mr. Bickham they had tied him to a triple homicide through a dog-scent lineup, in which dogs choose a suspect’s smell out of a group. The dogs are exposed to the scent from items found at crime scene, and are then walked by a series of containers with samples swabbed from a suspect and from others not involved in the crime. If the dog finds a can with a matching scent, it signals — stiffening, barking or giving some other alert its handler recognizes.

The handler, Deputy Keith A. Pikett of the Fort Bend County, Tex., Sheriff’s Department, is “a charlatan,” said Rex Easley, a lawyer in Victoria, Tex., who represents a man falsely accused by the police of murdering a neighbor. Deputy Pikett, the lawyer said, “devised an unreliable dog trick to justify local police agencies’ suspicions” for producing search warrants and arrests. NYT

But the "dog evidence" is used to put put people in jail "in many states, including Alaska, Florida, New York and Texas, said Lawrence J. Myers, an associate professor of animal behavior at the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine."

The more one reads about the (in) justice system of the USA, and learns how this system puts more people in jail than any other on the planet, the more one wonders if it's safe to live in the USA at all.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

On December 4, 2009, hundreds of bloggers from the USA, Brazil and Europe will be blogging simultaneously about the increase in electrocution deaths at the hands of US police departments armed with "Taser" brand name massive shock devices.

The Electronic Village blog has composed and posted a list of the names, ages and skin color/national origins of 45 electrocution victims from across the United States, and these names are being republished at blogs from across America, like the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC graphically recalls the cost of the war in human lives.

AfroSpear and afrosphere participants are also circulating an online petition calling for Congressional hearings into the increasing number of "Taser" electrocution deaths, and into video evidence that "Tasers" are being used as torture devices and devices of summary extra-judicial executions.

What has not been clarified is whether the blogging community will call upon its readers to engage in additional action whose purpose is to end "Taser torture". For example, the favorable outcome in the Jena Six case came not merely from blogging and reading about the Jena Six, but also from a march that mobilized as many as 30,000 people and captured media attention worldwide, focused on an inexplicably anachronistic "white tree" and nooses at a public Louisiana high school.

The Bloggers Against "Taser" Electrocution action effectively poses the question, "What will be the functional equivalent of the Jena Six march in protest of the 45 electrocution deaths in the United States since the beginning of the year?" Bloggers know as a matter of historical fact that they were effective in the Jena Six action, in conjunction with Color of Change and the Chicago Tribune, by informing the public and calling the public to action, while the action of a much broader outraged and disgusted public, including Black students from universities throughout America, really brought justice for the Jena Six, in conjunction with Color of Change's very effective legal resources fundraising.

So the December 4 Bloggers Against Taser Electrocution action of writing and informing about Taser torture is not an end in itself, but a catalyst for the type of national mobilization needed to exercise political pressure.

Below are the names of those electrocuted (killed by electric force) by police this year without the benefit of trial or judicial process:

Electronic Village

"has documented 45 taser-related deaths in the United States since the beginning of the year:

However, nothing seems to be able to stop the continued taser-related killings. I remain convinced that the 'Use of Force Continuum'needs to show tasers as 'near-lethal' ... definitely an error to claim that they are 'non-lethal'.

I personally do not understand why Electronic Village prepares a list of 45 electrocution deaths and then says that "Tasers" should be classified as "near lethal". The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines lethal as "capable of producing death." If Tasers were not "capable of producing death", they would not have produced the 45 deaths documented by Electronic Village. I also question whether attacking the semantics of police guidelines that police obviously are not following anyway will be a successful strategy for attacking pre-trial, extra-judicial electrocutions and executions.

Torture devices do not need to be reclassified; they need to be banned and eradicated.

Since tasers have produced the death of 45 people in ten months, the devices are not merely "near-lethal", which would mean "almost" capable of producing death. They are in fact, and without meaningful dispute, "capable of producing death," and therefore they are "lethal" by definition, and not merely "near lethal".

The Minneapolis Police Department is again defending itself against accusations that an officer went too far during an arrest.

Video given to WCCO-TV late Monday night shows a man with his hands on a squad car when an officer uses a Taser on his neck.

Attorney Albert Goins is suing the City of Minneapolis on behalf of his client, Rolando Ruiz. They're asking for $75,000 and that the officer involved be reprimanded.

The video given to WCCO starts only seconds before the Taser is used on Ruiz, not what led up to the incident. But in that time, no struggle can be seen before the officer used his Taser on Ruiz. What is seen is Ruiz with his hands on the hood of the officer's car.

The dash camera of the squad car was rolling when the officer approached Ruiz with Taser in hand. see Video HERE

Another reason why I urge you to join the “Stop Taser Torture, blogging for Justice Day – 12.4.09″

Our goal is to unite the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day – Taser Torturein America, Canada and throughout the world.

Join us on December 4th. “Stop Taser Torture, blogging for Justice.” as we raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

Don’t forget to support the petition to the United States Congress calling for public hearings on the systemic human rights violations occurring with Federal funding for the use of Tasers® against American citizens. The United Nation’s Committee against Torture has declared that Taser use can constitute a form of torture, while USA: Amnesty International has an on-going concern about the use of tasers on American citizens. More HERE

The video given to WCCO starts only seconds before the Taser is used on Ruiz, not what led up to the incident. But in that time, no struggle can be seen before the officer used his Taser on Ruiz. What is seen is Ruiz with his hands on the hood of the officer's car.

The dash camera of the squad car was rolling when the officer approached Ruiz with Taser in hand. see Video HERE.